BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The Institute for Justice, an Arlington, Va.-based civil liberties law firm that has fought food-truck restrictions in Atlanta, Chicago and other cities, has asked the Birmingham City Council to reject a proposed ordinance that would limit when and where mobile food vendors could do business in Birmingham.

"The proposal raises grave constitutional concerns and will only serve to stifle entrepreneurship and rob Birmingham residents of the many benefits that food trucks and carts have to offer your great city," Christina Walsh, director of activism and coalitions for the IJ, wrote in a letter to council members and Mayor William Bell. Her letter was dated Nov. 11.

The council has been considered guidelines to regulate the mobile food industry as far back as July 2012, when some restaurant owners complained the food trucks were stifling their business.

A major sticking point with the mobile vendors is a provision in the ordinance that would prohibit food trucks or push carts from operating within 150 feet of an existing restaurant.

"Some brick-and-mortar restaurants view the legislative process as a way to stifle food trucks and protect themselves from competition," the IJ's Walsh wrote in her letter.

"Protecting established businesses from competition, however, is an unconstitutional and illegitimate use of government power."

Councilman Johnathan Austin, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, told AL.com today that he has received the IJ's letter and said the council would address "all of the concerns" of the food trucks operators, restaurant owners and private citizens.

"We get letters like that all of the time from organizations all over the country," Austin said. "We are going to do everything we can to makes sure we address all of the concerns."

In addition to the 150-foot proximity restriction, the IJ said it opposed a provision that would limit the trucks' hours of operation and another that would establish the food zones, which the IJ said are "unnecessarily restrictive."

"New restaurants open up next door to existing restaurants every day, with no uproar or calls for the government to stifle the competition," Walsh wrote. "The presence of food trucks will not cause restaurants to close. . . .

"Restaurants and food trucks offer different experiences and have different advantages and disadvantages. Customers should decide which of these businesses they want to patronize; government officials shouldn't be making that decision for them."

The IJ also created the National Street Vending Initiative "to combat arbitrary and unconstitutional laws that stifle the rights
of street vendors" and has fought laws restricting mobile vendors in
Chicago, Atlanta, El Paso, and Hialeah, Fla.